My talk involves my research for the George Marshall Medical Museum on First World War patients at Powick Mental Hospital, near Worcester which contributed to my dissertation for a Masters in Local History at University of Birmingham.

I talk about the female and the male patients, discovered in original records held at the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service at the Hive in Worcester. The patient casebooks have rarely been accessed since the information is protected by the 100 year rule and additional legislation designed to protect the identity of vulnerable people. However I tell the stories of some of the patients at Powick during the war, the woman who attacked her neighbour, another who liked to undress, a man who believed he was an opera singer and another who escaped. I talk about those local men who were so worried about the war, it affected their delusions, and those soldiers who hadn't even finished basic training but told heroic stories of winning medals in France.

At a time when mental health is becoming big news, I recreate the lives of lost people, talk about their experience and paint a picture of their experience as staff tried to help them with occupational therapy and medicines in a time when the mentally ill have hardly been studied yet.